VCU announces new community-based initiative

By Malorie Burkett

Dr. Roderick McDavis, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University, recently announced a new initiative that will promote partnering between the university and the community to address critical social issues.

"VCU-Community Solutions: Working Together, Changing Lives," is the culmination of the Social Sciences task force which was charged by the provost to highlight, coordinate and expand VCU's work in the social sciences to address issues critical to the community. Based upon input from the community and the expertise of VCU faculty across the campuses, the initial focus will be on youth violence and early childhood development.

"With this new initiative, VCU faculty and students will have a vehicle to apply their knowledge and to make a real difference on issues that matter to the community while enhancing their own scholarship and learning," said McDavis.

As part of the announcement, Community Programs and the Center for Teaching Excellence co-sponsored a lecture for university and community members titled "Community Campus Partnerships that Generate Positive Social Change." The lecture featured Sam Marullo, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgetown University and Kerry J. Strand, Ph.D., Andrew G. Truxal professor of sociology at Hood College, Frederick, Md. Marullo and Strand also are authors of the book "Community-Based Research and Higher Education."

Dr. Catherine Howard, director of the Office of Community Programs and chair of the task force, says that community-based research (CBR) unites the three traditional academic missions of teaching, research and service in innovative ways and is a promising methodology for the work of VCU-Community Solutions. This month, 40 faculty members participated in a workshop where Marullo and Strand explained how to incorporate CBR into an academic setting and provided participants with clear guidelines on how to carry out this work both in professional scholarship and teaching.

A few years ago McDavis requested a team from the Grace Harris Leadership Institute to develop a concept paper for a social science initiative to parallel VCU Life Sciences. The team evolved into a task force comprised of VCU faculty representing every school and college. The task force conducted a series of focus groups with businesses, nonprofit leaders, city officials and local foundations while collecting information on VCU's involvement with the community. From these tasks, VCU learned how the university could be a partner in addressing the community's critical needs.

For more information on the new initiative, visit www.vcu.edu/provost/.